Foolish Child Rather Than A Courageous College Student (Detainment of a Korean-American Student in North Korea)

The media has reported that Joo-Won Moon, a college student currently attending New York University, has been detained in North Korea for five months. Moon claimed through a released video clip that he entered North Korea in order to vividly and frankly inform many about the reality North Koreans have been facing daily, and he also emphasized that the North Korean government has treated him well with sufficient food and comfortable accommodation. Despite the compliments Moon has received for his courage by some optimists, the writer would like to harshly criticize his imprudence. Moon, although he has not specified his motivations, probably wanted to gain attention and publicity by “courageously” climbing over barbed wires to reach Pyongyang. As an ambitious elite studying in a selective college, he also would have considered acting as a bridge between North Korea and the US by voluntarily walking into one of the most dangerous, nerve-wracking region in the world. However, this meaningless attempt rather resembles the case of Dennis Rodman, who foolishly interacts with the dictators and coaches the North Korean basketball team in order to “promote peaceful relationship” between two nations. Moon, in the writer’s opinion, simply underestimated how convoluted and difficult diplomacy and negotiation are. Instead of trying to become a negotiator of the United States to North Korea, he became an obstacle to his own country because this situation inevitably distracted, or perhaps triggered the aggressive relation between two countries. Like how an innocent British reporter was suddenly brainwashed to become a propaganda reporter for the ISIS, the writer and several professors from the SAIS of Johns Hopkins University* are concerned that North Korea might exploit Moon as a tool or a hostage to obtain their right to use deadly weapons or to practice human rights violation that the world has been sanctioning. Consequently, the writer cannot observe or identify a single benefit for the US, or the world as a whole through this impulsive action that a college student has committed.

*Opinions from the Johns Hopkins University professors were collected last summer in Washington D.C. when the writer fortunately had an opportunity to intern for the US-Korea Institute of Johns Hopkins University.